To ask if you have made “family friends” as an adult

[CottageGreen]

Hello
Just wondering if anyone has managed to make “family friends” whilst having young children and if so how? I’m talking about friendships where the parents and children all socialise with each other. I’d like my children to have some friends outside off their school friends and while they do clubs on the weekend it’s very much “drop and run” so not sure how much opportunity there will be to extend those friendships outside the group. A lot of the school parents seem to already have circles they have developed at NCT, uni friends with kids of the same age etc. We haven’t had much luck there so wondering if there will be other opportunities. Would love to hear your experiences

We did, but things have definitely slid now the kids are in their teens. A couple of families have moved away, the husbands all got on fine, but never developed their own friendships, and then two of the older kids had a massive falling out which was majorly awkward and things like big group camping trips came to an end.

We have one family who are our friends. Our DD’s went to nursery together but we are all friends.

I wish there was something like NCT but for parents with slightly older kids who would like to meet other people. There are so few environments for meeting people with families outside the school gates or if you have a sociable street

Dont victimise yourself and look for excuses. Be proactive and start the invites. Doesnt matter where you meet people.

Invite invite invite. It’s like throwing spaghetti at the wall - some sticks some doesn’t.

We are so lucky have 6 or so other families locally we are family friends with and others too. Kids teens now very few of them are still friends with each other but the adults are. We have managed to survive our kids falling out in a few cases too.

We socialise all the time it’s brilliant. A mixture of making an effort and luck. We moved somewhere lots of other families with young children moved to so met at toddler groups / primary school and we were all open to friendships as we were all new in town. Men friends too.

We did through rugby.
And also on holiday! Obvs the holiday ones are not local, but meet up a bit.

Yes we do and they're a real mix. We have the advantage of living where we grew up so some of our family friends are actually people we were good friends with at school and have stayed so throughout. The others though are a real mix of:

• nursery families (although DD is now 13!)
• school families
• families of people connected with activities DH or I do, e.g. he made a group of mountain biking friends and now some of them are family friends
• neighbours
• families of people connected with DD's main activity
• families of people I met when I used to be a brownie leader
• families at have met on holiday

The point is, with the exception of the old school friends, these opportunities that are open to you, but you do have to be quite proactive at making it happen. Invite people to things, suggest outings etc. It isn't mostly luck, some of it is effort and a bit of risk- taking.

Me and my old boss interestingly! We both had babies about a year apart and started to increase our meet ups…. Now we see each other every couple of weeks and the kids just play great together! Her son is exactly half way between my two so plays great with either one and as a three.

it’s lovely. Ironically my friends from school etc even though we live near each other and have similar age kids we tend to just meet up without them, rarely see their kids 🤷‍♀️